This week continues the narrative on Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway.
No doubt that region has contributed a lot to modern-day Nigeria. Their leaders too, some of whom are alive while some are deceased, have served to make this country a great one. I think we owe them a debt of gratitude. I don’t think we can compensate them enough for their services. I will name a few at the risk of offending many. We have Professor Eyo Ita (1903–1972), Ernest Sesei Ikoli (1893–1960), Dr. Kenule Beeson Saro-Wiwa (10 October 1941 – 10 November 1995), Major Isaac Jasper Adaka Boro (September 10, 1938 – 9 May 1968), Chief Edwin Clarke (May 25, 1927 – February 17, 2025), Chief Eyo Ita Esua (1901–1973), Dr. Clement Isong (April 20, 1920 – 29 May 2000), Dr. Joseph Wayas, GCON (21 May 1941 – 30 November 2021), Chief Anthony Eromosele Enahoro (22 July 1923 – 15 December 2010), Chief Godswill Akpabio (63), GCON, Chief Arthur Edwin Prest (1906–1976) and Sir Festus Okotie-Eboh (18 July 1912 – 15 January 1966).
Others are Former President Goodluck Jonathan (68), GCFR, Chief Ufot Ekaette (17 April 1939 – 25 September 2019), Chief Allison Akene Ayida (June 16, 1930 – October 12, 2018), King Jaja of Opobo (1821–1891), Chief Douglas, Amanyanabo of Opobo (1915–1980), Professor Horatio Oritsejolomi Thomas (1917–1979), Dr. Udo Udoma (21 June 1917 – 2 February 1998), Chief Humphrey Omo-Osagie (1896–1977), Chief Michael Ani (30 November 1917 – 18 December 1985), Sir Dennis Osadebay (29 June 1911 — 26 December 1994), Dr. Okoi Arikpo (20 September 1916 – 26 October 1995), Chief Wenike Opurum Briggs (10 March 1918 – 21 April 1987), Chief Harold Dappa-Biriye (26 September 1920 – 2005), Chief Louis Orok Edet (1914–1979), Chief Margaret Ekpo and many others.
Let us take a look at some of them.
Professor Eyo Ita (1903–1972) was the founder of the Nigeria Youth League Movement. He was born in Calabar. He had his education at Duke Town School and then went to Calabar’s famous Hope Waddell Training Institute. After teaching at the Baptist Academy, Obanikoro, Lagos (1926–1928), he went to the USA where he studied at the Teacher’s College of Columbia University, majoring in religion and education. He later read for a BA in Canada. On his return in 1933, he became active as an educationist, a pamphleteer, and a nationalist who believed strongly in a role for Nigeria’s youth. He formed the Nigeria Youth League Movement, which had little effective existence at first. After spending some time at Ogbomoso, where he taught but also wrote pamphlets and press articles, he returned in 1938 to Calabar, where a National Institute had been founded by local educated people, and he became its head. Then he started his own West African People’s Institute, an educational institution for which he became famous. It had a press which published his works: The Assurance of Freedom (1949), Crusade for Freedom (1949), The Revolt of the Liberal Spirit in Nigeria (1949), Sterile Truths and Fertile Lies (1949), Two Vital Fronts in Nigeria’s Advancement (1949), National Youth Renaissance (undated), Theory of Social Symbiosis (1951), etc.
Chief Eyo Ita was a leading member of the National Council for Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC) after its foundation in 1944, and was elected to the Eastern Nigeria House of Assembly in 1951 on the party’s ticket. In 1948 he became the first National Vice-President of the NCNC. After elections in 1951, which the NCNC won in the Eastern Region, he became Minister for Natural Resources and Leader of Government Business for the Region. A year later there was a crisis within the NCNC; in January 1953, the nine NCNC ministers in the East resigned, but Chief Ita and five others withdrew their resignations and stayed as ministers despite a hostile House of Assembly, until new elections in the same year installed a government under the NCNC leader, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe.
Before that, Chief Eyo Ita had formed a National Independence Party (NIP) with Dr. E.U. Udoma and Jaja Wachukwu. Later in 1953 the Calabar-Ogoja-Rivers (COR) movement was founded to call for separation of the non-Ibo minorities from the Eastern Region, and Chief Ita was one of the leading figures for some years. Later his NIP joined the United National Party (UNP) of Alvan Ikoku to form the National Independence Party.
In 1959 he announced he was leaving the COR movement and returned to the NCNC. The “Professor”, as he was called, was not prominent in politics thereafter. After independence he devoted his time to developing and improving his school.
Chief Ernest Sesei Ikoli (1893–1960) was born on 25 March 1893 in Rivers State. He was the son of an illustrious merchant who traded on the coast of south-east Nigeria. His mother was among the first women from the Niger Delta to receive Western education. He had his education at the Bonny Primary School and then King’s College in Lagos, where he was one of the foundation students on its opening in 1909; later he taught there, becoming assistant Mathematics master in 1913.
After resigning from King’s College in 1919, he went into journalism as editorial assistant at the Lagos Weekly Record under the editorship of Thomas Horatio Jackson, who had taken over from his father, John Payne Jackson, who founded the paper in 1889. After two years with the Record, Ikoli founded his own newspaper, the African Messenger, in 1921. He remained its editor and proprietor until 1926 when he was appointed the first editor of the newly founded DAILY TIMES, whose first editorial he wrote on 1 June 1926.
The previous year the Daily Times had taken over Ikoli’s African Messenger. In 1928 he left the Daily Times to found THE NIGERIAN DAILY until 1931 when it ceased publication. Chief Ernest Ikoli also took part in politics in Lagos, starting as secretary of the local branch of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) of Marcus Garvey.
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